Women's Basketball: CU Buffs edged by No. 7 Cal

Colorado unable to capitalize on Cal poor shooting at line

A good chunk of Colorado women's basketball practices are spent working on boxing out and getting rebounds, but on Sunday the Buffs learned something.

"We obviously need to work on it a little bit more," head coach Linda Lappe said.

The 20th-ranked Buffaloes took No. 7 California down to the wire, but failure to snag key rebounds in the final seconds cost CU in a 53-49 loss at Coors Events Center.

CU (11-2, 0-2 Pac-12) pulled within 51-49 with 16.7 seconds to play. Cal (12-1, 2-0) then missed six of eight free throws in the final 16 seconds, but CU couldn't capitalize.

In fact, Cal was just 5-for-14 from the line during the final 4:24 and 11-for-26 in the game.

"We had more opportunities than we can ever expect," said CU senior Chucky Jeffery, who had a team-high 13 points and eight rebounds. "We have to bear down and box out, that's all it comes down to. They gave us opportunities, even down the stretch. We've got to get tougher."After a Brittany Wilson bucket pulled CU within 51-49 in the closing seconds, the Buffs fouled Cal guard Layshia Clarendon, who then missed both free throws. That's exactly what the Buffs wanted, but Cal got the rebound, Clarendon was fouled again and then went 1-for-2 to extend the lead to 52-49.

CU raced down the court and hoped for a backside screen and a Lexy Kresl 3-pointer in the corner, but Jeffery lost the ball out of bounds with 5.2 seconds to play.

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"We didn't quite get that far (to get the ball to Kresl) and even if we had, it wouldn't have been a great screen on the backside," Lappe said. "We were rushing a little bit too much."

That forced the Buffs to foul again. This time, Cal's Brittany Boyd missed both free throws, but the Bears got the rebound again and drilled a final free throw to seal the game.

Cal out-rebounded the Buffs 43-34, with 17 of the Bears' rebounds coming on the offensive end.

"To me it was the difference in the entire game," said Lappe, whose team came into the game out-rebounding opponents by an average of 11.9 per game. "We've been telling our team that, yes, we're a pretty good rebounding team, but we're not good enough. We've been doing rebounding drills every single day because we knew what was to come. We knew Stanford and Cal were going to be first (on the Pac-12 schedule). We knew they were the best two rebounding teams."

Offensively, the Buffs struggled throughout. They made just 35.2 percent of their shots (19 of 54) and went through two long stretches of poor shooting that killed them.

Midway through the first half, CU went through a stretch of 7:31 in which it went 1-for-10 from the floor, and had as many turnovers (three) as points.

Despite that, the game was tied at 24 at halftime, because CU's drought coincided with Cal scoring just four points in a stretch of 8:52.

The Buffs opened the second half strong, taking a 32-30 lead on an Ashley Wilson bucket. After that basket, however, the Buffs went 2-for-17 from the floor in the next 11:46. Cal never got the lead above eight points, though, because of CU's defense.

"Defense is the most important part of the game," Jeffery said. "That's the main reason we were in the game. There were a couple stretches where we weren't scoring, but they weren't scoring either. We realized we weren't getting shots, but we had to do it on the defensive end, because it could have got out of hand. We were getting stops and that's what it takes and once our shots started to fall, we could get back into it a little bit."CU held Clarendon, Cal's leading scorer, to just five points. The Buffs also shut down 6-foot-2 forward Gennifer Brandon and 6-3 center Talia Caldwell, holding them to a combined four points, all by Caldwell. That duo came in averaging a combined 23.7 points per game.

None of what CU did, however, was enough to earn its second top-10 win of the season.

"We've got to know that the things that are going to get us beat, we have to get better at, like rebounding," Jeffery said. "Like coach said, we can't do everything well except something; you have to do everything well when you play a top 10 team in the country. That's just how it is."

Notable

The Buffs, who lost 57-40 to No. 4 Stanford on Friday, were held below 50 points in back-to-back home games for the first time since the program's second and third home games ever, in 1975. Those games were held at Balch Fieldhouse. ... Arielle Roberson had 11 points and six rebounds for the Buffs, while Rachel Hargis had six points, seven rebounds, three blocks and two steals. ... Boyd went down with a knee injury early in the first half, but scored 13 of her game-high 15 points after returning to the floor. ... The Buffs have lost 19 in a row to top-7 teams and are 9-40 all-time against teams ranked that high. ... CU is 1-10 the last 11 times it has been out-rebounded. Four of those games have been against Cal. ... CU leads the all-time series 5-4, but Cal is 4-0 against the Buffs since the start of last season. ... Cal improved to 10-2 in its last 12 Pac-12 games away from home, with the only losses coming against Stanford.

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